


two truths & a lie

by dilkirani



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: BUT THE DEATH OCCURS AFTER A LONG HAPPY LIFE TOGETHER, Canon Era, F/M, and future stuff, if that makes a difference?, pre-Bus era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-12 01:21:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7078648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilkirani/pseuds/dilkirani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're my best friend in the world.<br/>You're perfect.<br/>I'm getting there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	two truths & a lie

1.  _You’re my best friend in the world_

Jemma Simmons knows people consider her a bit odd. Too bright for all of her peers and most of her elders, she speaks out of turn. She doesn’t pick up on awkward grimaces, and she pushes too far. She doesn’t understand the point of lying just to be polite.

By the time she meets Leopold Fitz, she’s used to superficial friendships and being whispered about, even at the Academy where her brilliance is nurtured. The rejection hurts, but she pushes it down to a tiny, hidden place inside of herself. Maybe she’ll address those feelings someday, but in the meantime Dr. Dr. Simmons has so much more to learn, and all the possibilities for her life are spreading before her in a luminous way. If the journey is a tad lonelier than she expected, well, she honestly doesn’t have the time to worry about it. Groundbreaking discoveries don’t just happen, after all.

She tries, in her way, to befriend Fitz. She’d never met anyone her age as smart as (or  _almost_  as smart as) she is, so naturally her curiosity is aroused. But Fitz barely acknowledges her, and she tamps down the sting his dismissiveness brings in that same small part of herself where she locks up all of the other rejection. His loss, at any rate. He is as brilliant as they say—easily and wonderfully inventive—but he’s nowhere near as disciplined as she is, and she is determined to  _crush him_  in the class rankings. (Mildly competitive; she is  _mildly competitive_.)

When they’re paired up together in chem lab, he is awkward and seems to have difficulty making eye contact. Jemma thinks he’s probably upset she scored a 100% on their last exam while he only managed a 94%. Far above the class average, but still a bit embarrassing to be sure.

They work well together; somehow their intentions sync up even if their words don’t. For the first time in her life, her lab partner is adding something to her work, and she can’t help but enjoy the process. 

A few weeks into the term, she makes an offhanded remark and he returns it with a joke so unexpectedly clever that she stares for a moment before laughing loudly. He instantly flushes but meets her eyes for the first time, and her stomach somersaults when she sees how brilliantly blue they are, now focused on her.

After that, everything is easier than she expected. Their projects are always the best in the class. She drags him around to lunch, to dinner, to Doctor Who marathons in his dorm, to their advisor’s office with a plan for graduating three years early. Their friendship is new and exciting, sharp quips and breathtaking innovations. But it’s also safe and comfortable, falling asleep on his couch after late-night study sessions, a blanket from his mum tucked carefully around her. Fitz is grumpy and prickly and the sweetest person she’s ever met.

“You’re my best friend in the world,” she tells him one day, leaning her head against his shoulder, exhaustion making her vulnerable. 

“Yeah?”

“Of course! I would never lie to you, Fitz.” And she hasn’t, not once.

“Yeah, well, good. ‘Cause you’re mine too.”

Jemma smiles up at him. She’s hardly had friends before, let alone a best friend, so she assumes this is the term people use to explain that peculiar feeling when a person has become your home. This must be what everyone else has always had, and she can’t believe she almost missed out.

1a. And then, years later, when they haven’t yet blown out the window but she’s feeling the hundred punches to her stomach all the same, when she’s already drowning:  _Why would you make me do this? You’re my best friend in the world!_

1b. Years later, watching Fitz gently cradling their newborn daughter in his arms, sleep-deprived and painfully in love and a bit (a lot) scared:  _There’s no one else I’d rather do this with. You’re my best friend in the world._

1c. Years later, trying to be grateful for everything she never thought she’d have but mostly terrified of halving her heart:  _Please stay. You’re my best friend in the world. Don’t make me do this alone._

  
2.  _You’re perfect_

The first time Jemma and Fitz are invited to present their research together at a conference, she’s so excited she can barely breathe. She’s given talks before during graduate school, but never at such a prestigious conference. Some of the highest-ranking SHIELD scientists will be in attendance—they might actually be handpicked for positions at the Sandbox. Most importantly, everyone will see that her work benefits from Fitz’s expertise, and vice versa. She’s never imagined a future without him, but their time at Sci-Ops is ending soon and more and more often she finds herself panicking at the thought. She has convinced herself that a successful presentation on such a timely and crucial topic could ensure they’re allowed to work together from here on out.

And the conference is in  _Rome_ , which is just thrilling.

Fitz works as hard on the presentation as she does, but he never seems quite as excited to discuss all the ways in which this will change their lives. He deliberately misunderstands her gentle questioning and she lets it go; if there’s one thing she’s learned about Fitz, it’s that sometimes you just have to let him explain in his own time.

The night before their talk they stuff themselves with pasta and three kinds of gelato and retire to their separate rooms. She’s in bed, but her mind is cartwheeling, anticipating possible audience questions and concerns, when she hears a soft knock at her door.

Fitz looks awful and she wraps him up in a hug without hesitation.

“It’s nothing,” he mumbles against her shoulder. “I’m just nervous.”

“Really? But why?”

He shrugs helplessly. “You’re so excited about this, and what if I muck it all up?”

She rolls her eyes affectionately. “You’ve presented so many times before, and you’ve always been great! You never seem nervous to me.”

“Yeah, well, this one’s the most important one I’ve ever done, isn’t it? You haven’t been talking about anything else for months.” He tries to act annoyed, but the slight tremble in his voice gives him away. “I just… don’t want to disappoint you,” he finishes, so softly that she would miss it if she weren’t preternaturally attuned to him. 

“Fitz, you don’t have to worry about anything, I promise. We’ve worked so hard on this. And anyway, you could never disappoint me, no matter what. You’re perfect.”

His eyes catch hers, briefly. She’s momentarily stunned by the vulnerability and longing she sees, and it’s like she doesn’t know him at all. But in the next instant he closes off and shakes his head dismissively. “No one’s  _perfect_ , Simmons, that’s absurd. Even if the presentation goes well, it can’t be  _perfect_.”

Jemma wags her finger at him. “No, our presentation is going to be perfect, and you are perfect, and I refuse to argue with you about this.” She gives him a quick kiss on the cheek and drags him over to the couch.

“There’s a documentary on I was watching earlier; it’s got a lot of monkeys in it. Think it’ll calm your nerves?” His eyes light up immediately and she grabs some snacks while Fitz settles in, leaning forward eagerly the moment a capuchin appears onscreen.

They fall asleep entwined on the couch and she wakes sore and mildly embarrassed, although she’s not sure why. They’ve fallen asleep watching movies together on countless occasions. She doesn’t have time to work out why this feels so precarious before rushing to take a shower as Fitz quietly slips out.

She’s right though—their presentation is perfect and Fitz is perfect, and when he grins over at her afterwards her stomach swoops in a way she doesn’t understand.

2a. And then, years later, she’s stumbling through her vows because she honestly hadn’t expected to cry. She was saying something really poetic. There was this metaphor she’d been particularly proud of, but now, surrounded by all of the people who make up her world on a miraculously sunny Scottish day, everything reduces down to this one moment, to this one person whom she’s loved for over half her life. He’s beautiful and he’s crying and she knows—she’s always known—that Fitz will be her constant forever. The only thing she gets out is:  _Fitz… you’re perfect. You’re my everything._

2b. Years later, she sneaks up behind Fitz still reading to their daughter, who has finally drifted off to sleep. “Isn’t she perfect?” Fitz whispers, and she smiles. 

“I thought no one could be perfect,” she reminds him, although she tends to agree with his assessment. Maggie is the best thing she and Fitz have ever created together in a lifetime of creating wonderful things.

“Well, Maggie is.” 

She and her daughter are incredibly close, but Fitz is Maggie’s hero and sometimes she’s afraid her heart can’t actually contain all of her emotions when she watches them together, scheming and inventing and generally driving her mad. (Really, she thinks Fitz is far too easy on their daughter, but he insists that Maggie has perfected Jemma’s nose scrunch. Apparently the man who  _dove through a hole in the universe_  is too weak-willed to say no to an eight-year-old begging to stay up past her bedtime just to reread Harry Potter.)

Jemma smirks at him and answers sarcastically because otherwise the truth and depth of her feelings will overwhelm her:  _You’re perfect, and she’s just like her father._

2c. Years later, and he’s wasting time trying to apologize for mistakes made when they were only children. He’s suddenly afraid the decades of complete openness between them haven’t been enough, that there’s still somehow the possibility she doesn’t fully understand what she is to him.  _Shh_ , she whispers, peppering his face with kisses and holding his hand as tightly as she can, forever pulling him back to her.  _You’re perfect. You’ve always been perfect._

3.  _I’m getting there_

Jemma convinces Fitz they  _absolutely must_  take the field assessments, even though Fitz tells her about a dangerous mission gone awry at least once a day. (She firmly believes he’s just making it up at this point; surely he doesn’t have the clearance level required to access all of this information anyway. Surely that many missions can’t have gone wrong?)

Jemma loves working in the lab—she loves working with  _Fitz_  in the lab, and part of her thinks she could be happy passing the rest of her life in this type of productive toil. Who knew what they might develop that would change the world?

But there’s so much she hasn’t seen, and sometimes she feels how young they are compared to everyone else, how little outside the classroom they’ve experienced. She doesn’t feel robbed of a childhood, necessarily, but she never really got to explore, and the idea of traveling the world with Fitz by her side (why wouldn’t he be by her side?) is exhilarating.

Fitz is always the voice of pessimism, but eventually he caves—like she always knew he would (like he always knew he would).

They both fail. Not spectacularly, but Jemma Simmons has never failed at anything in her life. She had never even considered the possibility that she and Fitz wouldn’t pass, and failing only makes her achingly understand how much she had wanted it.

Fitz is honestly a bit relieved, but he doesn’t admit it. He brings her beer and ice cream, and they curl up on her couch without saying much. Her eyes are glassy, but she doesn’t cry.

“Are you okay?” Fitz asks at two in the morning, when he’s readying to head back to his place. 

Fitz never even wanted to leave the lab, but he tried so hard for her. He’s been extraordinary this whole time and for some reason that breaks her. “I’m getting there,” she manages. “It’s probably for the best anyway. We’d make terrible field agents.” She gives him a watery smile and hugs him a little longer than necessary.

When they’re recruited together for Coulson’s team, she’s nervous but mostly ecstatic, mostly delirious because she’s getting everything she ever wanted from life.

She’s also relieved that now she doesn’t have to live with the only lie she’s ever told Fitz.

3a. And then, years later, when Skye offers sympathetic conversation and advice that she doesn’t take now but will in the future:  _Yeah… I’m getting there._  Not quite a lie, but so far from the truth. She could confide in Skye, and she wants to, but she’s worn raw and only a fragile barrier separates her emotions from shattering everything. She could destroy the whole world in her anger and drown herself in this despair. So,  _I’m getting there_. As it turns out, Jemma has picked up a few marketable skills from Hydra.

3b. Years later, after Fitz kisses her and then rejects her, or rejects himself, or rejects them both, she wakes from a nightmare in which she never went to another planet, but Fitz marries someone else anyway. And he’s actually happy. She can still see him, looking radiant like she’d thought he might look if one day they had ever— _Deep breaths, Jemma._

_It’s okay. I can do this. At least I wasn’t dreaming about that godforsaken planet again. See, I’m getting there._

The next day, he immediately shows her new research on the portal without any other pleasantries and she can taste how brittle they both are. They have clawed their way back to each other, and now she’s hurt him worse than ever.

_You’re my best friend in the world_ , she thinks loudly at him, imploring him to read the language of her tea offering, of her tremulous smile.  _You’re more than that, you’ve always been more than that, I’m so sorry, everything is tearing me apart, please just let me choose you because I will, I will choose you on any planet, I will choose you forever._

Fitz leaves for lunch, he leaves to help Coulson, he leaves. He emails her more findings.

_It’s okay. I can do this. I’m getting there._

3c. Years later, when Daisy visits one rainy day:  _I’m not alright, but I’m getting there._  Jemma hugs her for a long, long time. She finally allows herself to cry openly instead of face pressed against his unwashed jumper. 

She knows it’s illogical, but by this point Jemma had thought they were all actually invincible. Nothing about their lives had been ordinary. They befriended and worked with actual super heroes, saved the planet every other week, jumped through universe-crossing portals before dinner. Consulting on highly classified ops from a secured cottage home in Scotland was the closest to normal they’d ever gotten. Cancer, after all that, seemed so very pedestrian. 

That night, Daisy combs her fingers through Jemma’s gray hair as the credits roll on an unwatched movie. Jemma tells her everything she can remember, even things that in the past she had kept just for herself and Fitz. Suddenly, she’s terrified of being the only one left in the universe who knows everything magnificent and aggravating and perfect about Fitz. She talks to her daughter all the time, but right now Maggie is her own kind of heartbroken and Jemma can’t add to the sadness weighing her down. It’s too soon; she doesn’t know how to reassure her only child that a world without Fitz is still beautiful. With Daisy, she barely has to lie at all.

“I love you, Jemma,” Daisy says. “I can’t imagine what this is like, but you’re going to get through it. I’ll do anything I can to help you.” 

In this moment, her heart is full. In this moment, she can lie well enough to convince Daisy and herself that she’ll be okay.  _I’m not alright, but I’m getting there._


End file.
